Season Grades: Management and Coaching

The Warriors players are not blameless for the debacle that was the 08-09 season, as we’ve gone over in painful detail for the past week. As many readers have pointed out, however, the problems we’ve highlighted were not purely of their own making. Outside of injuries, most of the problems faced by the team can be boiled down to a roster built under two competing blueprints, and a coach deploying that roster under an entirely different third plan. There’s no telling whether one of the plans, followed by all parties, would have been a success. The three-way tug-of-war, however, created a frustrating, aimless mess. Management, by definition, is supposed to order, to organize, and to direct. This year, the sum total of the owner’s, president’s, general manager’s and coach’s actions produced anything but clarity and cohesion.

Chris Cohan / Robert Rowell - I’ve bundled the Warriors’ owner and president here since I’ve never heard a good explanation of where one’s authority ends and the other’s begins. We’re left to assume that Rowell acts with Cohan’s blessing, meaning that all failings or successes can be hung on the pair. Since Fast Break is fair and balanced in the finest tradition of the phrase, we’ll cover successes first.

Cohan and Rowell made the right decision signing Ellis and Biedrins to long-term deals, particularly given the final contract numbers. Both players still need to prove that they deserve the deals, but for a team that has let so much home grown talent walk away, it was encouraging to see two of their best prospects locked up for the long run at reasonable rates. I also still support Rowell’s decision not to offer Baron a long-term contract without key incentive clauses or performance triggers in place. Given Baron’s medical and motivational history, giving him carte blanche deep into his 30s would have been a mistake (just ask the Clippers). I have tremendous respect for what Baron did for the Warriors over the final 30 games of the 06-07 season, but that doesn’t mean we should turn over the keys to the franchise with no strings attached. Finally, I think Rowell and Cohan made the right decision to fine Monta Ellis. Ellis had to be held accountable for his mistake and the subsequent cover-up. His own recklessness resulted in missed games. There’s no reason he should have been paid for them. These moves made sense. Unfortunately, almost every other move we can track back to Rowell’s office went counter to the smart ones above.

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Where to begin? The era of salary protection, symbolized by the hardball tactics with Davis, was a short-lived one. Rowell spent the week following the opt-out of his aging, injury-prone star searching for another aging, injury-prone star to sign to an 8 or 9 figure deal. Brand said no. Gilbert too. But not Corey. When the strongest praise Mullin could muster at the press conference was that he respected Maggette’s gym-rat habits, some took it as a sign that Mullin had found a kindred spirit. In retrospect, it might have been the best he could come up with on short notice, given that the sum total of his involvement may have been being marched out for a press conference smile. When the (power) play was over, the Warriors were the proud owners of an almost entirely redundant player that helped none of their prior problems and actually made two (defense and ball-movement) worse.

But Rowell was just getting warmed up. Stephen Jackson had spent the better part of the prior year subtly lobbying for a contract extension. The murmurs were initially dismissed as wishful thinking, given that Jackson had a year left before he hit the open market. As the summer continued, however, word leaked out that Chris Mullin and Jackson’s agent had both been cut out of the loop, with Jackson and Rowell dealing one-on-one to get something done. In fairness to Jackson, negotiating a rich, long-term, incentive-free extension outside the reality-based constraints of an open market was a coup. Too bad it’ll likely haunt the team for the next half-decade as his role on the team diminishes and the rewritten economics of the league make the final bill even more unpalatable. I tried to muster some defense of it at the time based on Jackson’s leadership and the need for team stability. His “it ain’t me” speech and “it’s all me” play during the season pretty much obliterated that justification.

Finally, in the “it can always get worse” category, Rowell found a way to make the loss of the team’s newly anointed franchise player even more disruptive. Fining Ellis was entirely appropriate. I would have even supported a steeper penalty. Set the amount, hold a press conference, end of story. The void option, however, was never likely to happen and holding it over Ellis only prolonged the destabilizing nature of the situation. Rowell bled out a wound that should have been sewn up before the season started. If the team didn’t have the guts to void Ellis immediately, it should have taken the threat off the table and rallied around their once and hopefully future star. Removing the void option following an initial analysis of the prognosis for recovery seems like a major risk, until you consider how things would have played out if the Warriors had ultimately decided to rip up the contract at a later date. Ellis and his agent would have immediately initiated the arbitration procedures under the CBA. A neutral doctor would have made the tremendously subjective call of whether Ellis was in sufficient condition to fulfill the terms of his contract based upon whatever playing time he had managed prior to the void decision. There would have been a significant risk that the Warriors would still have ended up on the hook for the deal after engaging in the ugliest conceivable spat with the player supposed to lead the franchise to glory. Rowell’s supposedly “smart business decision” of holding the void open was too clever by half, signaling that the team was unwilling to stand behind the player it tied its long-term fate to just a few months earlier. Management may have been trying to send a message to Ellis, but everyone else on the roster likely heard it loud and clear: if Monta gets left in limbo, those down the depth chart shouldn’t expect any better.

The points above are all over the logical map, but one clear line cuts through them. In every decision made by Rowell, starting with the Davis’ contract and continuing through the rest of the season, Chris Mullin found himself on the losing side, often cut out of the decision entirely. Rowell’s biggest mistake when all is said and done was not any of the affirmative decisions above, but the power vacuum he created by removing Mullin and his staff from the equation. Filling that empty space, like a healthy belly in a snug t-shirt, was Don Nelson. Any discussion of Don Nelson’s use (or abuse) of power last season should start with the recognition that it was Cohan and Rowell who elevated him beyond reproach, then cleared away any obstacles to his exercise of unfettered power.

Stacked up at the end of the season, all of the above looks like ad hoc decision making at its worst, a toxic blend of personality above rationality and up-front savings above long-term returns. But even assuming there’s a plan buried somewhere in these moves, so far it has been an unmitigated failure.

Grade: F

Don Nelson – When Don Nelson inked an extension at the end of last season, it was justified as a means of removing the “win now” pressure that seemed to run the 07-08 season into the ground. In evaluating Nelson’s performance following that extension, it’s essential to keep that talking point in mind. My beef with Nelson’s coaching job in the 08-09 season was not the losses — those should have been expected given Ellis’ injury and a roster birthed by a front office at war — it was how he lost those games.

Supposedly freed from the pressure of churning out immediate wins, Nelson preceded to play his veterans, Jackson in particular, as if every night were Game 7 of a playoff series. It should have come as no surprise — particularly since the exact same thing occurred a year earlier — that Jackson’s play would suffer as the minutes racked up and his body would eventually break down from the heavy mileage. Known quantities like Maggette and Crawford racked up major minutes in meaningless games, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but almost always filling out their personal stat sheets. Meanwhile, the youth brought in by Mullin for development while the “win now” pressure was off — Wright, Belinelli, Randolph, Morrow, Hendrix and Nelson — were either benched or outright cut. Minutes were inconsistent, mistakes were fatal, and sustained opportunities emerged only after veterans went down to injury. No one wins debating alternative histories, but it’s far from clear to me that we would have seen serious minutes this year from either Randolph or Morrow had the veterans ahead of them in the depth chart not gone down to injury.

These problems should have been predictable for a Nelson team. The love of mismatches (typically meaning small ball), the reluctance to allow youngsters to learn through on the court mistakes, the heavy-minute reliance on a few offensively focused players, the utter disinterest in defense — we’d seen it all before, both in Oakland and in Nelson’s other stops around the league. We had also seen what came next. First was the passing off of defense to an assistant coach (without any explanation of how that coach was to make any real change without the ability to manage in-game substitutions). Eventually came the passing off of entire games to assistant coaches (although Nelson would often “take over” these games in close forth quarters, in a way that might have actually built a shared empathy between young players and young coaches). Then there were the public statements chastising or criticizing players, claims to the press immediately contradicted on the court, and odd moments of candor when things likely would have been better left unsaid (the rest-a-vet program).

It finally ended up where Nelson teams always seem to land: in an unstable mix of personal feuds, rehashed excuses, and open questions. Nelson placed himself at the center of the storm and his hand on all decisions is now the only clear constant. The exercise of authority alone does not bring stability or direction. There has to be some consistency to its application, respect from those subject to the authority, and faith that adherence to it will lead somewhere better. It all pretty much boils down to trust, and from the admittedly limited perspective of a fan it appears that Nelson has less of that now than when he started the season. That apparently broken connection between coach and players — more than wins, losses, minutes, or rotations — is what made Nelson’s year a failure.

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Normally I’d give Nelson an F, but since we’re grading on a curve of expectations — and we should have seen at least some of this coming — he’s spared from the Cohan/Rowell territory. Nelson can be a brilliant coach given the right challenges, roster and moment. For the sake of our franchise I hope he can rebuild the goodwill that the team rode into the 06-07 playoffs. If not, I hope he can win as many games as quickly as possible to get to the record, then promptly ride off into the Maui sunset.

Grade: D

Chris Mullin – I’m holding back on a full Mullin retrospective, given that I’ll likely be writing the summary of his Warriors front-office career shortly. There’s also the challenge of figuring out what decisions came from Mullin’s desk when handing out credit and blame. Finally, there has to be some consideration of the choices where Mullin appeared to get overruled, as well as those where his decision carried the day. Here’s a rough attempt, with the caveat that it’s unclear where these decisions originated (which in itself is a sign of organizational dysfunction).

The failings of the 07-08 team were no mystery. They lacked (1) size, (2) an unselfish presence at the point guard spot, (3) a consistent outside shooter, and (4) the team will to defend. To kick off the 08 off-season, Mullin addressed problem 1 by drafting two power forwards and signing another one as a free agent. Randolph and Turiaf appear to be steals but Hendrix is at best an unknown since he never got a chance from Nelson and has yet to get called up from the D-League. Mullin’s solution to problem 2 was to re-sign Baron Davis to a long-term contract with fewer incentives or performance requirements than Rowell wanted. As Davis’ performance with the Clippers this year demonstrated, that likely would have been a very poor idea. Once Baron walked, Mullin’s plan B was to trade for Marcus Williams. Again, given that Williams never fit into Nelson’s plans, it’s hard to judge how big a mistake the William’s trade was, but we now have an empty roster spot that cost us a first round pick. Problem 3 got attention in the form of the Morrow signing. Mullin, or more likely Pete D’Alessandro, showed great foresight in inking Morrow to a two-year deal. The re-signing of Azubuike at a reasonable price should also be counted as a plus here. Problem 4? Turiaf and Randolph have become two of the team’s better defenders, so Mullin at least provided some raw materials for defensive improvement. The application of those raw skills falls on the coach.

This story gets more complicated if Mullin green-lit the Maggette signing (possible) or Jackson extension (doubtful), but those negatives could be balanced somewhat if he was also against hanging the void option over Ellis’ head all season (likely). Taken as a whole, Mullin’s GM efforts show something resembling a clear-cut plan: keep together the Warriors’ previous core (Davis, Jackson, Ellis and Biedrins), add youth to our weak positions (size — Turiaf, Randolph, Wright — and shooting — Belinelli and Morrow), and re-sign affordable role players to round out the roster (Azubuike and Watson). It’s not the exact plan I would have proposed, but it’s a defensible one given what the team had done in prior years. At this point, however, it’s an alternative history for a soon to be unemployed NBA executive.

Cutting through the fog, Mullin’s moves last year weren’t all on target, but provided the few bright spots in an ugly season. A decent year given the challenges, particularly in comparison to the performances by those who stripped him of power and filled the void.

Grade: B

My apologies on the length to those who made it down this far. For those afflicted with Warriors’ fandom, I recommend blogging as a cheap alternative to therapy. As always, please feel free to join the circle of trust below.

Adam Lauridsen

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My comment was that there is no way in hell the Warriors trade Randolph. And Biedrins and Randolph for a one-year rental of Bosh? That’s lunacy.

The front office feels it needs a blockbuster trade to sell seats, I believe that, and they might give up Biedrins to do that. But Randolph and Biedrins for Bosh? That’s just wrong. No way the Warriors do that.

As for Nelson, there have been reams of opinion written on him, and I don’t want to spend more time and space on him. Your points are good. And this year was horrendous, in terms of coaching. What I had to say was faint praise — however, I did see games over the past three years where I couldn’t believe the Warriors were actually in the game, let alone able to win them. There were 48 of them a year ago. 48 wins with that group. I wouldn’t think an idiot drunk could do that.

CURSE OF MULLIN

Saturday March 21, 2009, Marcus Thomson II blog entry:

“Why Don Nelson should go:

Because, in short, he doesn’t want to be here. At least it seems that way. He’s lost the locker room (I think the only players who would cry if he left are Corey Maggette and Rob Kurz, maybe Stephen Jackson). His rotation patterns and moody tongue have singed nearly everyone in the locker room.”

rg

Jsl,
I don’t think it makes any sense having players that Nelson won’t play. I think he would play Bosh with another big. I don’t think this is the case with AB,Turriaf,Wright or Randolph. I would much rather get rid of Nelson and keep the roster how it is but this is not realistic. Nelson is going to be the coach next year. I think it would be crazy to trade Randolph, Beindrins and a first for Bosh if we had any other coach but we don’t.

jsl

Monsta and rg: Touche. On to a new thread.

Hank

Dogpark. This blog is a dogpark. A place where the same dogs come every day to sniff each other’s butts and piss and crap in the same place day after day after day. Big picture: 18,000 plus fans on average, 5th best in the NBA, felt entertained, win or lose. And anyone who’s ever played anything knows–love, hate, reviled, even wins and losses–are not the bottom line criteria. It’s does the coach get his players to play hard on a consistent basis. Based on filling the seats–dispite all the intelligent comments to the contrary—Management gets an A. And given the Ws played hard most of the time, the coaching staff gets an A. Adam gets A+. And most of the bloggers here, who are, without a doubt, intelligent and knowledgeable, they deserve an A for being disagreeable instead of knowing how to disagree. And I get an F for being addicted to coming to the dogpark.

Oregonguy

Hank at 155. Nice. And a welcome sense of humor to end up this blog. I read 155 commentaries in my first visit to this blog and was by and large impressed. Some of you take it far too seriously for just fans, it makes one wonder if some people actually involved are contributing under alias’s? Cool.

Not that it matters but I started following the team when Al Attles was still a player. And in all those years except for the one championship year the best years were under Nelson. So I cut him a LOT of slack, as does gmoney who stated things far better than I. Perspective.

Can’t wait for the draft, next season, and hope to god TWO teams that were near-great this year stumble badly so the W’s can catch them! Peace.

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